I remember the moment. I was reading the old Age of Legend anthology, The Last Charge by Andy Hoare I think, my imagination alive with images of Dark Elf war-hydra’s smashing up Brettonian castles, when I realised how awesome a Total War adaptation of Warhammer would be. It’s safe to say then that not since Birth of the Federation last gave me exactly what I wanted in a game have I been as excited as I was by Total War: Warhammer.

All that remained was for my PC to finally died

And then it died.

Could anything match those expectations?

I’d enjoyed a preview glimpse of the campaign map at the 2016 Warhammer Fest, but even on the best-performing machine that a B-list novelist can afford the game is a thing of beauty.



There were a few issues with the camera not always being able to go where I wanted it, but this was a small thing, and neatly solved some time later by a camera mod (more on mods later).

The battle maps were equally impressive and every units performs as you know it should. Charging Reiksguard knight plough through enemy infantry in appropriately pleasing fashion. Cannons recoil and belch out smoke while their crew set about reloading. Giants stomp across the battlefield like they own it. I remain somewhat unconvinced by the weird missile effects. And I do miss the pre-battle speeches that I loved from the Medieval series, but even those do still occur in the special quest missions that can be unlocked by your faction’s Legendary Lords. And even after 30+ hours of play there are features like first-person control that I still haven’t figured out what to do with.

But those are small niggles on something which is otherwise perfect.

To the actual game.

I’ll begin by pining for the days when games came in a box with a manual, because even for a veteran of the Total War series such as myself it took me a few dozen turns of trial and error to figure out *exactly* what ‘Heroes’ were and how to use them, how to manage provinces etc. There is a help feature but I found it a bit clunky to use and it wasn’t always helpful. The game’s fairly intuitive though, and playing with all the buttons to see what happens is probably a sound policy. If it’s worked out so far for the skaven race, it’ll work for you.

On my first run through I decided to play as Dwarfs. Because skaven aren’t in the game yet (more on that later too…), and the Dwarfs are my second favourite race. This is where I did the bulk of my fiddling, but even there I found the game to be a bit too forgiving. The Dwarfs do have their starting difficulty listed as ‘easy’, and I am a player who likes to be worked, so I ditched that after a couple of hours and re-started as Vampire Counts. Now the battles featuring the Vampire Counts are amazing, eerie and beautifully dark, but after about 2-3 attempts I just couldn’t seem to get a foothold. A bit too much like hard work, perhaps. And maybe I miss archers. It was about this time that I went to GW: Leeds to sign some copies of The Last Son of Dorn when the store manager impishly suggested that perhaps computer games weren’t for me – but not to be deterred I plunged in again.

This time with Karl Franz’ Empire.

And after a few more false starts I enjoyed the most epic, gripping, painfully addictive Total War experience of my life.

The starting objective for the Empire are relatively: evict the rebels from your home province and then set about unifying the peoples of the Empire.

I’ve already talked about the battles, so a special mention should go towards diplomacy. Diplomacy exists for the Vampire Counts and the Dwarfs (and even the Greenskins!) too, but its central to how the Empire expands and it’s tricky to get right. Agreeing to one friendly nation’s request to go to war with another can hammer your reputation, meaning you can forget about that alliance with Ostland you’d been slowly pushing towards. It’s full of characterful touches too. Never go back on an agreement with a Dwarf faction – they’ll remember FOREVER.

So with all that in mind, I started out by bending the (cough) free city of Marienburg to my will, before slowly bringing the other Imperial States into my faction through more peaceable means. However even the opportunity to bring another State into your faction has to be thought through carefully. I was in the latter stages of the game with Avrland, Stirland, and Middenland all under my banner when I confederated with Nordland and then watched my bankrupt Empire collapse. Because when you absorb another faction you have to pay for the upkeep of all their armies and their heroes, and the additional armies also increases the upkeep premium on your existing forces. I had to reload an old save and go again.

And I loved it!

And it was definitely towards the latter stages that the campaign really sucked me in. I was getting up at 5 am just so I could play for an hour before I had to start working. Chaos had crushed Kislev and was well on the way to burning through Ostland, Ostermark, and Hochland. Nordland held on by the skin of its teeth and the mighty Todbringer permanently garrisoned up in Middenheim. The effects of Chaos corruption were starting to show up on the campaign map even over Reikland itself. By this point the faction screen had my as the greatest power in the world but my forces were split between fending off Chaos in the north, desperately trying to finish off the last bastion of the Vampire Counts (the undead can rebuild an army FAST) while keeping the Greenskins from nipping in behind my southern armies, and completing Karl Franz’ quest missions. I’ve never been so happy while sat at a computer.

Ultimately what won the day was a good use of diplomacy.

In so many games alliances are just another way of saying that X won’t attack Y and vice versa, but Total War: Warhammer is the first I’ve seen that lets you co-ordinate military targets with your allies. There’s a Beastman horde rampaging through Middenland, but my nearest army is heading off to relieve the besieged city of Salzenburg? No problem, I’ll tag it for my Marienburger and Brettonian allies who are in the area. It would be nice for it to work both ways as it sometimes feel like I’m throwing orders about to my allies and waiting for them to intone ‘THY WILL BE DONE’, but it still felt more realistic than anything I’ve played to date.

And so by coordinating my southern armies with the Dwarfs I was able to finally put down the Vampire Counts and contain the Greenskins south of Black Fire Pass. And by patching together a coherent resistance from what was left of the Empire, the forces of Archaon Everchosen were at last put to rout in an epic battle on the plains of Hochland.
The Old World could breath again, and by Sigmar it felt as though I’d earned it.

DLC

No review of Total War: Warhammer would be complete without mentioning DLC.
There was a bit of a ruckus amongst the fandom that Chaos Warriors would be a DLC faction (free to pre-orders) and not integral to the game, but this is just the way games are nowadays. Personally I find the DLC and the Free-LC (the Brettonia faction coming February 28th!) to be enjoyable, with the steady release helping to keep the game fresh. Are they fun add-ons to the game? They certainly are. Are they cheap? They certainly are not. But then the game is just fine without them and you can cherry pick what additions you want. I had no interested in playing as Beastmen, for instance, but I leapt on the Skarsnik and Belegar DLC (because I wrote Belegar in Thorgrim, obviously), and actually sat and watched Steam refresh itself waiting for the Wood Elves to appear for download.

And I would pay almost any price to play as my beloved skaven

Or Chaos Dwarfs.

Or Tomb Kings.

Sigh.

I’ll settle with free Brettonians for now.


a teasing gap where the capital of a certain Under-Empire should be...

I also mentioned the fan-made mods at Steam Forged. There are thousands of these things, ranging from putting more gold on Dwarf shields or making Chaos steeds bigger, to altering the AI of certain factions or unlocking factions like Kraka Drakk or Mousillon as playable races. I’ve downloaded about a dozen and there’s a couple in particular I love.

- The mod that put Empire troops trained in different provinces in the proper State colours gives a nice varied, lore-appropriate feel to Empire armies.

- Cataph’s: The Southern Realms. It introduces unique units to Tilea, Estalian and the Border Princes rather than being essentially versions of the Empire.

The question is – if its possible for a fan to create a whole new army for three human factions, why has no-one yet introduced a building tree to train Halflings in the Moot?

VERDICT

No game is perfect, and my main issue with Total War: Warhammer was that it made me finish my last book late. But that aside there are a few minor points. Firstly, the AI never attacks my castles. Ever. An entire playthrough and I’ve not once played defender in a siege battle. A few lore gripes like the lack of Halflings and that one time I got a message saying that Zhufbar had brought their allies, the Greenskins, into their war with me. Naval units are also glaringly absent, particular when you’re trying to defend Nordland from wave after wave of Norscan raiders

But there can be only one verdict.

10/10.

Make the time. Cut down on luxuries like sleep, switch to eating meals that can be consumed over a keyboard (I recommend pizza) and buy it.